I am shocked and dismayed at the questions we are and are not allowed to ask these days when it comes to fix-ups, online dating, and dating in general.

Acquaintances/friends can ask me whether I’m open to dating a guy who has kids but it is apparently sacrilegious for me to ask if he is willing to consider having more kids as I want to be a mom someday.

I ask friends who want to fix me up whether they guy they barely know can handle a strong woman and they look at me with curiosity and say, “how would I know?”

I want to have kids and have determined that it is critical to avoid wasting time with people who don’t. I am amazed at the responses I receive when I inquire about an online dater’s willingness to have more. Some men tell me about their vasectomies and openness to their reversal; others yet tell me about their vasectomies and unwillingness to reverse them; and then there are those judging how I could have possibly waited so long to have kids, as if I chose my current circumstances.

One guy I met online asked me what I had going on that night. I told him that I was meeting up with a friend and asked what he had planned. He told me he had a date. I believe we repeated this conversation at least four times that week. And then, a week or two later, I received the question:

Am I not hot enough?

Um… what? That night brought me one of the strangest text exchanges from a suitor who wanted to display all of his insecurities and let me know about all of the women who rejected him because he wasn’t good looking enough. How is it helpful for me to know how sad he is because his mediocre approach to online dating (saying “hi” in his deepest intros) isn’t working and he thinks it’s because he’s not “hot” enough. I genuinely have no words for this.Suffice it to say, I have never gone out with him.

So, I bring it back to the original question – what can we ask up front and what should wait to share or, perhaps, never verbalize?